Title: widget UI does not respond
Last modified: August 21, 2016

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# widget UI does not respond

 *  [merchantkitty](https://wordpress.org/support/users/merchantkitty/)
 * (@merchantkitty)
 * [11 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/)
 * In this newest version 3.9.1 the widget UI does not reflect on the sites front
   end. If you remove all the items, it still shows the widget. if you click on 
   the widget, you will see a check box indicating the area it is in, but no way
   to remove it. If you drag a new one in, it won’t appear. We un and re installed
   the version. works the same as before. I tried over 20 themes. All had sever 
   glitches in many areas including the widget area. One theme through a random 
   widget up in the header. I tried themes that had worked in the past. I finally
   figured out it is the version.
 * If you have not upgraded. make sure you never do.
 * other problems, headers not allowing customization
    backgrounds also haven’t 
   tried complicated posts yet, I can only imagine what that will be like.
 * Apparently NO ONE ran any tests before they pulled this version out of their …
   cubicle.
 * please hurry back to work. Some of us earn a living with this … product.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

 *  [Sleneau](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sleneau/)
 * (@sleneau)
 * [11 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072335)
 * You seem to still be greatly upset with wordpress. Maybe we can help troubleshoot
   your website. Can you post a URL to the specific pages that are having the issue
   on your website? If you are experiencing problems on the admin side of WordPress,
   then please take a few screenshots, and post links to them here so that we can
   help troubleshoot your issues.
 * Also, please include the following:
    1). A list of all the plugins you have running
   2). The name of the theme you are using 3). The specific conditions under which
   the errors took place. 4). The name of your hosting provider
 * I am going to try to replicate the error, to hopefully document what is going
   on. Most likely, the problems are due to a curious quirk of the interface that
   is a bit more counterintuitive than is possibly could have been. Either way, 
   this is the only constructive way to make progress toward assessing and addressing
   the issue, so I look forward to hearing from you.
 *  Thread Starter [merchantkitty](https://wordpress.org/support/users/merchantkitty/)
 * (@merchantkitty)
 * [11 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072401)
 * smallhealthysteps.com.
    it is version 3.9.1 (memorized that now cuz so many problems)
   currently the only plugin i have installed is Yoast’s SEO for Word Press. (this
   plug in is the only reason I don’t dump wp all together on 9 accounts) the current
   theme (but believe me I have tried over 20 themes trying to get it to work before
   we dumped the program and completely reinstalled only to have the same problems)
   is sg wordpress (site ground) that is installed by my host as the default. They
   tried to blame the theme too, I was like, dude, its YOUR theme. the condition:
   in the widget UI widgets are displayed that are not displayed on the live site.
   When you move them around there is no change. When you delete them all together,
   there is no change. There is also a problem editing the header. this particular
   theme will not allow you to change the header in the Header UI. On another theme
   I was able to change the header once I made the name of the header I wanted have
   the exact file name, and then insert it into the file through filezilla. The 
   name had to match, or else it would not take. However, I wouldn’t know the first
   thing about back programing the widgets to trick it to work. I should not have
   to, that is the point of using the program, so there is a friendly user interface
   that makes it easy. Again, my host provider is siteground. May I add that before
   March, I had no problems on any of my accounts and everything worked great. So
   there is an update somewhere that is disagreeable. WP version 3.9.1 noted that
   some of the changes were to those particular interfaces so me thinks hmmm… here’s
   the images: [ [image 2](http://tinypic.com/r/znr7n4/8) [image 3](http://tinypic.com/r/124hbp3/8) right
   now site ground is working to upload me with an older version of wp, at least
   that is what the ticket is asking them to do. I have already had 3 reps tell 
   me they would and then proceed to just direct me to 3.9.1 again. So we will see
   what we get when were done. regardless, I have 8 more sites that need to function
   properly.
 *  Thread Starter [merchantkitty](https://wordpress.org/support/users/merchantkitty/)
 * (@merchantkitty)
 * [11 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072402)
 * the first image didnt load
    [image 1](http://tinypic.com/r/2ebgxnb/8)
 *  Thread Starter [merchantkitty](https://wordpress.org/support/users/merchantkitty/)
 * (@merchantkitty)
 * [11 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072403)
 * they are sequential. read them in order (1,2,3) to get the story
 *  [Sleneau](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sleneau/)
 * (@sleneau)
 * [11 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072412)
 * That’s very strange. Typically, the widget panel instantly updates the database
   entry when you remove a widget. From my experience, I can think of four possible
   explanations.
 * **1). WordPress is broken**
    Wordpress v 3.9.1 has broken widgets. This probably
   isn’t the case, since it works on all of my own personal installations. Still,
   there could be a conflict somewhere that just hasn’t surfaced yet. It could also
   be that it’s unique to you. Maybe some of siteground’s code has some sort of 
   odd conflict with v. 3.9.1. Maybe there were errors setting up the database. 
   But when you tell me that you’ve reinstalled WordPress multiple times, and the
   issues are still persisting, I can’t rule it out that there’s a bug in WordPress.
   Again though, it’s working almost everywhere else, so let’s consider some other
   things that might be causing the issue.
 * **2). Siteground issues**
    There may be an issue with Siteground’s installation.
   I’d keep this in mind if you bought one of their “Easy new WordPress launch”.
   If you’re not downloading the WordPress installation from wordpress.org, and 
   uploading it to the server yourself, there’s a very big chance that misconfigurations
   are beyond your ability to address. There’s an equally good chance that Siteground’s
   plugins and themes are simply out of date now. Remember that they have built 
   and maintain their own WordPress themes, and so it is up to them to keep them
   compliant with current coding standards. A theme that hasn’t been updated for
   even a single year can have many lines of code that were perfectly acceptable
   when the theme was last updated, but which have since been rendered obsolete.
   Such themes can easily break the functionality of WordPress. I’m not sure that’s
   what’s happening, especially since you tell me that you’ve changed to multiple
   different themes and had the same result, but just know it’s a possibility.
 * **3). Conditionally triggered default widgets**
    There is a conditional statement
   on your theme that displays a set of default widgets when your widget areas are
   empty. This is actually normal for theme developers. They will check to see if
   you have widgets assigned to a sidebar. If not, several predetermined widgets
   just show up without any extra steps from you. You can tell if this is the case
   because the widgets should be different across each theme. If you change themes(
   with the widget areas empty) and different widgets appear in the sidebars–you
   know this is what’s happening. I don’t think this is your issue though, since
   the widgets keep popping up in your widget areas in the WordPress admin area.
   If these conditional widgets were the culprit, I would expect to see the widget
   area in the admin page empty, but still have widgets showing on the front page.
 * **4). Caching (most likely)**
    What seems most likely to me is that your pages
   are being cached and redisplayed from previous versions. I noticed that in picture#
   2, at the very bottom, it appears that you have some sort of built in plugin,
   or theme feature called SuperCacher. Caching means that instead of computing 
   an entirely new web page every time a user visits your web page, the server saves
   certain pieces of information that it thinks will not change very often (this
   is actually perfect for static sites that DON’T change, but less so for dynamic
   sites like blogs). The problem with caching is that sometimes, the server keeps
   on sending this old, cached information even when you make a change to the site.
   Browsers have their own caching as well, where they save images and code from
   a website you’ve already visited to make your next visit that much faster.
 * My recommendation is to clear your browser cache, and then play around with the
   settings in your theme SuperCacher. If that doesn’t work, then some next steps
   you could take are as follows:
 * 1). Use myPhp admin on your hosting provider’s cPanel to take a look at the database
   to isolate whether or not the values from the widget table are being saved properly.
   Clearly, this is overly technical, and can likely be skipped–the following URL
   leads to instructions about how to access that information (don’t change anything
   in the database if you go).
    [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/where-is-widget-data-stored-in-the-database?replies=3](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/where-is-widget-data-stored-in-the-database?replies=3)
   2). Manually install WordPress to see if the issue is with Siteground’s one-click
   WordPress service. 3). Switch hosting providers–bluehost and hostgator are two
   services that I know work for certain. You could try them. 4). You can try reading
   through the [changelog for WordPress 3.9.1](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/log/branches/3.9?rev=28353&stop_rev=28154),
   to see whether or not they updated anything having to do with the widgets. Actually,
   since you’re not familiar with technical goings on, I’ll take a look and see 
   what changes have been made. 5). If you go through all of these steps, and it
   still doesn’t work, then I would download a legacy version of WordPress and install
   it manually on your host provider.
 *  [Sleneau](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sleneau/)
 * (@sleneau)
 * [11 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072415)
 * Only item of interest I could find in the changelog:
    [https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/28124](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/28124)
 *  [Sleneau](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sleneau/)
 * (@sleneau)
 * [11 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072417)
 * Possible support tickets of interest:
    [https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/28009](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/28009)
   [https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/27878](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/27878)
 *  [Sleneau](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sleneau/)
 * (@sleneau)
 * [11 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072603)
 * This is also something important to consider. One-click WordPress installs are
   often broken as the following post confirms. It could be that your hosting provider
   hasn’t updates the dependent supportive technologies on the server on which WordPress
   runs. Try talking to them to update php to the latest version.
 * [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/more-white-page-of-death-news?replies=4](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/more-white-page-of-death-news?replies=4)

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

The topic ‘widget UI does not respond’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [ui](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/ui/)
 * [User Interface](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/user-interface/)
 * [widgets](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/widgets/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 8 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Sleneau](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sleneau/)
 * Last activity: [11 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widget-ui-does-not-respond/#post-5072603)
 * Status: not resolved

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